Holograms On iPad Using Sixth Sense Technology

I’ve heard many people taking about technology as a whole and that it’s not advancing as fast as in recent years which will eventually lead to a stagnation. I don’t agree at all with this statement and I believe that the advancement in technology will blow the mind of those who disagree.

For example, take a look at a technology called Sixth Sense developed by a MIT research assistant called Pranav Mistry. During the TED conference a couple of years ago, Pranav demoed a portable projector which gives people the possibility to interact with objects and the information displayed by the objects.

When Sixth Sense will be adopted at large scale will allow people to see the reviews of a book in real time then holding the book. The Sixth Sense projector knows that book your are holding and it will search the internet for reviews of that book. The reviews can be projected into the air or on the book or wherever you are looking.

According to inventor Pranav Mistry, Sixth Sense will be accessible to the a big chunk of Earth’s population as it will cost less than $350. Although Mr. Pranav said that the Sixth Sense software will be open-sourced, we are still waiting for the technology to be commercialized and adopted by manufacturers.

If you aren’t convinced by the enormous implications of Sixth Sense, then take a look at the video below. It was created by Zach Kind and it shows the technology implemented on the iPad. Thanks to Sixth Sense, the iPad’s display will be projected into the air as a hologram and it will give users the chance to interact with information.

Sixth Sense will partially make screen sizes obsolete as the hologram will be large enough for you to play Angry Birds and organize your iTunes playlists among other actions. The technology supports multitouch and hand gestures so it will be a pretty cool entertainment device.

Until the Sixth Sense mobile projector will enter mass production, watch the special video made by the aforementioned LA film student, Zach King, and let us know what do you think about the prospect of having holograms on your iPad!

Source: Link

Install GingerBread (android 2.3.4) on Samsung Captivate using ubuntu

Installing the android kernel on the mobiles has never been easy. The complexity in using linux, the tedious process involved in installing the android kernel is never easy (even in windows) .  But Heimdall changes it all, it made the process of installing the android even easy for a layman .

Steps : 

warning : Before You do anything backup everything important 

1. First Install the Qt Gui Libraries : 

            sudo apt-get install libqtgui4

   

2. Download Heimdall Suite 1.1.1 :

    Ubuntu 32bit:

         Command-Line Binary Download

         Frontend Binary Download

    Ubuntu 64bit :

         Command-Line Binary Download

          Frontend Binary Download

3. Launch Heimdall :

     press Alt + F2 and then type "heimdall-frontend" and hit enter 

Inventions That Changed the World

Our daily lives are governed by inventions. From what we wear to the food we eat and our methods of travel ,it's all been invented or significantly altered by inventions.
But sometimes an invention comes along that doesn't just change the way we do things but changes the world.
Inventions That Changed The World examines not only how and why life altering inventions got off the ground in the first place, but also how they created a domino effect spawning other essential inventions in their wake.
Playlist:

The Virtual Revolution : Documentary

The Virtual Revolution is a British television documentary series presented by Aleks Krotoski, which began airing on BBC Two on 30 January 2010. A co-production between the BBC and the Open University, the series looks at the impact the World Wide Web has had since its inception 20 years ago.Joined by some of the web’s biggest names – including the founders of Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, and the web’s inventor – she explores how far the web has lived up to its early promise.

EPISODE I :The Great Leveling

In the first in this four-part series, Aleks charts the extraordinary rise of blogs, Wikipedia and YouTube, and traces an ongoing clash between the freedom the technology offers us, and our innate human desire to control and profit.
DOWNLOAD

EPISODE II : Enemy of the State

With contributions from Al Gore, Martha Lane Fox, Stephen Fry and Bill Gates, Aleks explores how interactive, unmediated sites like Twitter and YouTube have encouraged direct action and politicised young people in unprecedented numbers.
DOWNLOAD

EPISODE III : The Cost of Free


She tells the inside story of the gold rush years of the dotcom bubble and reveals how retailers such as Amazon learned the lessons. She also charts how, out of the ashes, Google forged the business model that has come to dominate today’s web, offering a plethora of highly attractive, overtly free web services, including search, maps and video, that are in fact funded through a sophisticated and highly lucrative advertising system which trades on what we users look for.
DOWNLOAD


EPISODE IV : Homo Interneticus

Joined by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Al Gore and the neuroscientist Susan Greenfield, Aleks examines the popularity of social networks such as Facebook and asks how they are changing our relationships. And, in a ground-breaking test at University College London, Aleks investigates how the Web may be distracting and overloading our brains.

DOWNLOAD

Next Generation Mobile Concepts: Where are the mobiles heading

The mobiles are slowly becoming the computers of the future. Mobile phone business is one of the most rapid growing industries. Not so long ago, the popular and most awesome phone was Nokia 3310 with mere basic functions: call, text messaging and the only bearable game, snake. However, significant improvement has been made since then. Some phones have no buttons and are equipped with multi-touch screens, accelerometers, audio systems, video systems and hundreds of other media and productivity features. Perhaps the term "Super Phones" is a best way to describe them considering manner in which it is evolving. Started with the revolutionary Iphone which changed the way we use our mobiles which introduced the concept of "Super Phones" . Android had taken the concept  further by providing multitasking which Iphone used to lack. The early smartphones used to run ARM V7 and 8 architectures where the clock speed of the processor was restricted. Now with the new ARM cortex architecture  the clock speeds are touching 1.5 GHz and more over with the introduction of the dual core processors the restrictions which were enforced on the applications are removed which will help to bring the power of desktop computers to mobile.
What can we expect from the next generation of mobile handsets. We cannot exactly where it is heading, But for sure we can say that they are going to change the way we interact and they are going to rewrite the concepts of mobile computers. Here we will look over some of the NextGen mobile concepts.

1) IPhone:

Even thought it is the present represents the present flavor of mobile phone , but it is the mobile which changed the concept of next generation mobiles . So we can consider it as the root of the next generation mobiles.

2) Motorola Sea Bird :

here are many companies seeking to design & develop the "next generation" phone. We can now add Mozilla to this list. Seabird is an experiment on how users might interact with their mobile content as devices and technologies advance.he Seabird is based on Android technology, according to TechCrunch reports, and boasts some advanced features to improve user interaction. The most striking feature is the use of dual projectors allowing it to double up as a full-blown computer.

3) The Window Phone Concept:

Film shot using Nokia N8

Long Gone the days when we used to carry bulky video cam to shoot videos. First the handycams revolutionized  videography by ultra portable.Now mobiles are revolutionizing the field of videography by making it even more ultra portable and even matching the quality of standard Hi-def cam. Nokia is the forerunner in this field with its N-Series mobiles and it has taken mobile videography to next level with its new N8 mobile. The Movie  The Commuter, a short HD film starring Dev Patel and Pamela Anderson, was shot entirely on the Nokia N8 mobile phone.This movie was shot in London.

Programming Windows Phone 7 free ebook

�Programing Windows Phone 7 || Charles Petzold�

Microsoft Press || 997 pages || 36.8 Mb

 

Download

Book : Download

Source Code:Download

Description:

Programming Windows Phone 7 is truly a free download. This book is a gift from the Windows Phone 7 team at Microsoft to the programming community.It shows you the basics of writing applications for Windows Phone 7 using the C# programming language with the Silverlight and XNA 2D frameworks. This book is divided into three parts. The first part discusses basic concepts of Windows Phone 7 programming using example programs that target both Silverlight and the XNA framework. It is likely that many Windows Phone 7 developers will choose either one platform or the other.

Into The Universe With Stephen Hawking

Aliens

 

Time Travel

 

The Story Of Everything

Get Microsoft profession tools for FREE

Students can avail the facility of downloading Microsoft Software's for free by registering themselves at the Microsoft Dreamspark website. Dreamspark is an initiative taken by Microsoft giving students Microsoft professional tools at no charge. Under this students can download Microsoft visual studio, Expression Studio 4 , Sql server and many other.  Students can even register as a windows mobile developer for free(99$ per year registration fee waived off) and publish their software’s at windows mobile market place  . To register in Dreamspark you need to have a Live account and to verify yourself as an valid student either you need to have student identification number like “International Student Identity card “ Number or you need to have an activation code provided by Microsoft to your University .

Get Microsoft profession tools for FREE

Students can avail the facility of downloading Microsoft Software's for free by registering themselves at the Microsoft Dreamspark website. Dreamspark is an initiative taken by Microsoft giving students Microsoft professional tools at no charge. Under this students can download Microsoft visual studio, Expression Studio 4 , Sql server and many other.  Students can even register as a windows mobile developer for free(99$ per year registration fee waived off) and publish their software’s at windows mobile market place  . To register in Dreamspark you need to have a Live account and to verify yourself as an valid student either you need to have student identification number like “International Student Identity card “ Number or you need to have an activation code provided by Microsoft to your University .

National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL)

The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) is a Government of India sponsored collaborative educational programme. By developing curriculum-based video and web courses the programme aims to enhance the quality of engineering education in India. It is being jointly carried out by 7 IITs and IISc Bangalore, and is funded by the Ministry of Human Resources Development of the Government of India.

The course videos are available in streaming mode, and may also be downloaded for viewing offline. The video files are also viewable via the IIT Channel in Youtube.

Seven IITs and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have worked together to develop web and video based material for basic undergraduate science and engineering courses in order to enhance the reach and quality of technical education in India.

As of September 1st web and video courses in the following disciplines are available  and more courses are being added in the phase 2 of NPTEL programme

Links:

Youtube:http://www.youtube.com/user/nptelhrd

IITM: http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/

How Microsoft Kinetic Works

Microsoft's upcoming Kinect motion-control sensor for Xbox 360 isn't magic. The accessory, coming Nov. 4 for $150, uses a complex system of cameras, sensors, microphones and -- just as importantly -- software to watch and listen to a gamer moving in front of it.

A Microsoft patent, granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday, gives some insight into how Kinect works. In fact, the patent application sums up nicely, in one paragraph, what Kinect's sensors see and how Kinect sends that data to an Xbox.

To determine whether a target or object in the scene corresponds to a human target, each of the targets may be flood filled and compared to a pattern of a human body model. Each target or object that matches the human body model may then be scanned to generate a skeletal model associated therewith. The skeletal model may then be provided to the computing environment such that the computing environment may track the skeletal model, render an avatar associated with the skeletal model, and may determine which controls to perform in an application executing on the computing environment based on, for example, gestures of the user that have been recognized from the skeletal model. A gesture recognizer engine, the architecture of which is described more fully below, is used to determine when a particular gesture has been made by the user.

This figure, included in Microsoft's patent, shows a how a gamer's punching motion controls a boxing Xbox game through Kinect.Click here to enlarge

---

Stars Just Got Bigger: A 300-Solar-Mass Star Uncovered

Using a combination of instruments on ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have discovered the most massive stars to date, one weighing at birth more than 300 times the mass of the Sun, or twice as much as the currently accepted limit of 150 solar masses. The existence of these monsters -- millions of times more luminous than the Sun, losing weight through very powerful winds -- may provide an answer to the question "how massive can stars be?"

A team of astronomers led by Paul Crowther, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Sheffield, has used ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), as well as archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, to study two young clusters of stars, NGC 3603 and RMC 136a in detail. NGC 3603 is a cosmic factory where stars form frantically from the nebula's extended clouds of gas and dust, located 22 000 light-years away from the Sun. RMC 136a (more often known as R136) is another cluster of young, massive and hot stars, which is located inside the Tarantula Nebula, in one of our neighbouring galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud, 165 000 light-years away.
The team found several stars with surface temperatures over 40 000 degrees, more than seven times hotter than our Sun, and a few tens of times larger and several million times brighter. Comparisons with models imply that several of these stars were born with masses in excess of 150 solar masses.

Japanese Scientists Create Touchable Holograms

Touchable Holograms

How HTML 5 Will shock up the web

HTML5, the next version of the markup language used to build Web pages, has attracted attention for its ability to show video inside a Web browser without using plug-ins, such as Adobe's Flash. But lesser-known features could ultimately have a much bigger impact on how users experience the Web.
Experts say that what HTML5 does behind the scenes--such as its network communications and browser storage features--could make pages load faster (particularly on sluggish mobile devices), make Web applications work more smoothly, and even enable browsers to read older Web pages more easily.
Many websites now act like desktop applications--Web-based office productivity suites and photo-editing tools, for example. But many of the sophisticated features of these sites depend on connections that developers create between different Web technologies, such as HTML, javascript, and cascading style sheets (CSS)--connections that don't always work perfectly. As a result, websites can be sluggish, may work differently from browser to browser, and can be vulnerable to security holes.
Bruce Lawson, who evangelizes about open Web standards at Opera Software, says that to make websites perform functions the Web wasn't originally designed for, developers must perform complex coding tasks that can easily introduce errors and make applications fail.
The group working on HTML5, Lawson says,

Does Microsoft have a secret weapon for Windows Phone 7?

Microsoft got a lot of attention yesterday for its Oprah-style announcement that every employee would get a Windows Phone 7device after the new mobile platform launches this fall. As it turns out, those freebie phnes aren’t just expensive toys or gadgets. They’re part of an effort to create some unexpected hits and seed the market using the energy from Microsoft’s enormous pool of internal developers.
That bit of news didn’t get picked up yesterday. I first heard about it from Mini-Microsoft this morning. The anonymous insider, in his thoughtson Microsoft’s quarterly earnings call today, mentioned something I hadn’t seen elsewhere:

WP7: application developers in the queue? We need to re-enforce the cool apps that we’ll have ready when WP7 is launched. In a move that has totally delighted me, Microsoft is giving every employee the ability to write and deploy WP7 applications (and, what, ability to get a device at launch, too?) - wow! Now’s the time to truly show off your stuff and write for WP7 and get your app out the door.

Todd Bishop posted a memo from Windows Phone

Invisibility cloak turns into reality

Elena Semouchkina can make things invisible. The electrical and computer engineering professor at Michigan Tech used metamaterials to bend light waves to make objects disappear out-of-sight.
If the same thing could be replicated in visible light, Harry Potter fans would probably rush to the store to buy an invisibility cloak.
That reality is distant, but researchers are getting close.
Metamaterials act as designer atoms that can be used to bend light, so objects appear invisible. Unlike natural materials, metamaterials are artificial and depend on small resonators rather than atoms or molecules.
Semouchkina has made an invisibility cloak made of glass.In this case, the resonator is made of chalcogenide glass and is shaped like a cylinder. When run on computer models, the glass invisibility cloak works in the infrared range.
Previously, researchers have tried to create invisibility cloaks with metal rings and wires.
“Ours is the first to do the cloaking of cylindrical objects with glass,” Semouchkina said in a statement.
“Starting from these experiments, we want to move to higher frequencies and smaller wavelengths,” Semouchkina added. “The most exciting applications will be at the frequencies of visible light.”
Next, the Michigan Tech researcher is going to test out the invisibility cloak at microwave frequencies using ceramic resonators.
Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku said on The Colbert Report that in the coming decade, we will have something resembling a Harry Potter invisibility cloak.
rofessor Ulf Leonhardt of the University of St Andrews

10 Cool Things You Didn't Know About Stephen Hawking

source:How Stuff Works..

Even if you don't follow the developing theories in physics, you have probably heard of the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking. Most known as a brilliant mind in a paralyzed body, he's prided himself on making his complex physical concepts accessible to the public and writing the bestseller, "A Brief History of Time."

Bruno Vincent/Getty Images From some of his scientific beliefs to works he's written, there are a few things you might not have guessed about world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking.

And if you are a fan of Conan O'Brien, "The Simpsons" or "Star Trek," you might have seen him brandishing his cool wit during guest appearances on those shows.

Even if you are familiar with his academic work, however, there are many interesting facts you might not know about Hawking, stretching from his time at school and gradual development of disability to his opinions on the future of the human race.

Many find it surprising, for instance, that, despite his influential body of work, Hawking hasn't yet been awarded the Nobel Prize. We'll talk about some of the remarkable distinctions he has received, however.

Another interesting fact: Hawking was born Jan. 8, 1942, which just happened to be the 300th anniversary of Galileo's death.

But this has just been the warm-up. Next, we'll delve into some fascinating and unexpected facts about Hawking, including some things about his profoundly inspirational story.

                                                   

Invincible Apple: 10 Lessons From the Coolest Company Anywhere

source:fastcompany

On Wednesday, May 26, 2010, just after 2:30 p.m., the unthinkable happened: Apple became the largest company in the tech universe, and, after ExxonMobil, the second largest in the nation. For months, its market capitalization had hovered just under that of Microsoft -- the giant that buried Apple and then saved it from almost                                                                                                        Everyone wants to be like Steve Jobs and his powerhouse company. It's not as easy as it looks 

certain demise with a $150 million investment in 1997. Now Microsoft gets in line with Google, Amazon, HTC, Nokia, and HP as companies that Apple seems bent on sidelining. The one-time underdog from Cupertino is the biggest music company in the world and soon may rule the market for e-books as well. What's next? Farming? Toothbrushes? Fixing the airline industry?

Why I Fired Steve Jobs

As Apple's CEO introduced his new iPhone , and its market cap passes Microsoft's, the man who infamously fired him, John Sculley, tells The Daily Beast's Thomas E. Weber about his regrets, their rift—and how their partnership could have worked: Jobs should have been CEO, and Sculley's boss, rather than the other way around. Plus, other 1985 board members on Jobs then and now, and where they are today.

In the annals of blown calls, it ranks somewhere between the publishers who turned down the first Harry Potter book and baseball umpire Jim Joyce’s instantly infamous perfect-game flub last week. It was the spring of 1985, and the board of Apple Computer decided it no longer needed the services of one Steven P. Jobs.
Where are the men who sent Steve Jobs packing today?